The Savannah College of Art and Design’s towering new student dormitory along the Savannah River is set for a finishing touch Thursday night: a vote that is anticipated to remove the 17-story building off the public tax rolls.
The building, rising next to the Savannah River bridge and bearing a lighted SCAD at the top of the facade, is valued at $27 million, according to the Chatham County Board of Assessors, which is scheduled to vote on the property tax exemption Thursday evening.
Board members also will hear SCAD’s application for an exemption on the former Ghost Coast Distillery building, now a classroom and studio space valued at about $3 million. In 2023, the building’s previous owners paid about $48,000 in taxes.
According to an analysis by The Current, SCAD paid about $171,000 in total taxes to Savannah, Chatham County, and its schools in 2023 on a few small commercial properties in a mostly property tax-exempt portfolio worth $458 million.
Under Georgia law, private colleges don’t have to pay property taxes to cities, counties or K-12 public school systems on their educational buildings — so the likely Chatham approval vote is a formality.
Several other wealthy nonprofit universities in the U.S. such as Harvard or the Rhode Island School of Design pay local governments amounts in lieu of taxes to offset their use of public services like roads. SCAD, which has approximately 15,000 students in Savannah, doesn’t.
The new student dorm is “nestled in the west end of downtown with splendid views of the Savannah River and the historic district” and can house some 800 transfer, graduate, and undergraduate students, according to SCAD’s website.
For the 2024-2025 academic year, a two-bedroom suite in the River dorm, with two residents per bedroom, will cost $11,412; for a private room for one student, $13,143, not including fees. The cost doesn’t include food. Tuition for a full-time student in the coming academic year on SCAD’s Savannah campus will be $41,130, also not including fees.